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by kijin 5408 days ago
Hmm, that would mean no Gmail for anyone in Pakistan. Any service that uses SSL for logins would also become unusable if SSL was banned.

I don't see any mention of a wholesale ban on encryption, only the use of encryption for privacy purposes. So, port 443 might still be open. It's still pretty easy to distinguish between HTTPS traffic and VPN traffic, though.
2 comments
pavel_lishin 5408 days ago
Well, the article said:

> Authority prohibited usage of all such mechanisms including encrypted virtual private networks (EVPNs) which conceal communication to the extent that prohibits monitoring.

They sure can't monitor your email if you're using SSL, so I'd wager that yes, if you have gmail and live in Pakistan, now would be a great time to back it all up.

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pohl 5408 days ago
They sure can't monitor your email if you're using SSL...

That would have been my gut feeling until I saw this yesterday:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938516

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jevinskie 5408 days ago
They could proxy the SSL connections and still let people log in while monitoring the traffic. Of course, your browser will complain if they rewrap it in SSL unless they get a cert like Iran did.
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jm4 5408 days ago
They don't need to do what Iran did. What Iran did was get a cert that was automatically trusted by nearly every web browser in the world because the issuer was a trusted CA by default. You only need a trusted cert if you don't want users to get a warning. Iran was trying to be sneaky. Pakistan is up front about wanting to monitor traffic. They can use any cert they want. They could use a self signed cert to proxy SSL. Sure, the browser will complain that it's not a trusted cert, but the government is already saying they are going to monitor everything. If users add the cert to the "trusted" list they won't get the warning anymore.
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